Bingowings said:
Lee is Dracula (no really) he was just never allowed to be in a film where the story is correctly told.
Franco got the look right (possibly at Lee's insistence) but check the book.
The Count doesn't wear a cape, doesn't have an accent (only a strange intonation) is tall, well built, good mannered (when he wants to be) and doesn't have a bloody reincarnated lost love he is drippy over. He is also a cruel and vindictive monster.
The best adaptation is however the BBC version with Louis Jordan (almost everything in the book and very little else is there).
If Lee with his Franco look was in a production just a tad closer to the book than the BBC version you'd have the perfect Dracula.
The Coppola film is a deconstruction, almost a parody, of the book.
As "Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula" I would have no problem with it, but in its very nature it's the least faithful version, despite being extremely faithful in the point-by-point story structure. One author rewrote "Gone With the Wind" from a slaves point of view
Lugosi's "Dracula" is more faithful to the spirit of the book, despite throwing the plot out the window.
I enjoy the Jordan BBC Dracula, but if Jordan had been any more low key he would have been actually dead, not undead. That man is SUBTLE. IMHO I'd still take a highly flawed film like the Franco "Dracula" with the megacharismatic Lee over the BBC version (and what was up with the negative images?)
On a side note, I finally get to see Jack Palance's "Dracula." Got the DVD in the mail yesterday!